Invicta rises to its feet
The company suffered serious setbacks in 2015, but has proven to be resilient
In its nine financial years to March 2013 Invicta, fuelled by strong organic growth and a steady flow of acquisitions, had been something of a growth wonder. During the period, it lived up to the meaning of its name, invincible, by ramping up EPS at an annual average pace of 21.6%. Not even the huge slump in SA’s GDP in 2009 was able to halt its advance. But it was to prove to be not entirely invincible. It did have vulnerabilities, and they began to show in its financial year to March 2015. The expression "hit by a perfect storm" is often bandied about loosely, but in Invicta’s case there is no other apt way to describe what it faced. First came a wave of strikes in the six months to September 2014 that took a heavy toll on its Engineering Consumables Group (ECG) division, SA’s largest supplier of engineering consumables, equipment and spares. The strikes ended, but ECG’s problems, caused by a rapidly slowing SA economy, were growing apace. Capital Equipment Group (CEG), Invicta’s ...
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